21 Jan 2016

Reproduced with permission

Khadem signs the deal while Najib looks on – but where did all the money go from the 1MDB/Aabar “strategic partnership”?

Sarawak Report can reveal that a second Jho Low company, Blackstone
Asia Real Estate Partners Limited, has paid hundreds of millions of
dollars into the personal accounts of both the Malaysian Prime Minister,
Najib Razak and also the ex-Chairman of Abu Dhabi’s Aabar fund, Khadem
al Qubaisi.

Aabar, a subsidiary of the IPIC sovereign wealth fund, has been
enmeshed in a series of highly questionable and loss making deals with
the scandal-torn Malaysian development fund 1MDB, which is directly
controlled by Razak, using Jho Low as his proxy.

A Sarawak Report investigation has established that Blackstone, a BVI
registered company which gives an address in Singapore, has been cited
as the sender of a series of enormous dollar currency payments to both
men between 2011 and 2012. Our information includes telegraphic
transfer documents passed through the American banking system.

The off-shore company uses a tactic familiar to watchers of Jho Low,
in that it apparently seeks to give the impression that it is associated
with the US global investment giant, the Blackstone Group. However,
there is no link whatsoever between the legitimate multi-national and
this secretive shell company.

Jho Low and Li Lin enjoying the high life

In fact documents obtained by international investigators have
ascertained that the signatory for the company is none other that Jho
Low’s deputy, Seet Li Lin.

Seet also acted in the same capacity for the
notorious company Good Star Limited, which lies at the heart of the 1MDB scandal and of which Low was the sole shareholder.

The records show that before it was liquidated in early 2013, just
three years after starting operations, Blackstone Asia Real Estate
Partners Limited transferred well over half a billion dollars into
accounts belonging to the two men. This was exactly the period when two
major loss-making power purchase deals were funded through billion
dollar bond issues raised under a joint guarantee by the two funds. Much
of that money appears to be unaccounted for, forming a large part of
1MDB’s current debt problems.

Khadem scooped nearly half a billion dollars (RM2 bn)

Documents obtained by Sarawak Report show that four separate payments
were made to Khadem Al Qubaisi’s Luxembourg account at Banque Privee
Edmond de Rothschilde Europe (headquartered in Switzerland) in 2012.
The sums were enormous.

Firstly, on 29th May 2012 Blackstone Asia Real Estate Partners
transfered US$158,000,000 million into Al Qubaisi’s account, held under
the name of the The Vasco Trust, of which he was the sole beneficial
owner.

Blackstone
BVI is registered under an address in an office rental block in
Singapore – 36 Robinson Road. Documents in the possession of SR confirm
Al Qubaisi is the shareholder of Vasco Trust

Three further payments on August 3rd, October 31st and December 4th
comprised US$100,750,000, US$129,000,000 and US$85,000,000 respectively.

It makes for a total of just under half a billion dollars – over two
billion ringgit at current exchange rates, paid from a shady BVI company
into the hands of the salaried Abu Dhabi fund manager over just six
months.

How did this ex-fund manager legitimately earn this sum – or was it a kickback?

Insiders have confirmed to Sarawak Report that these payments were
regarded as kickbacks linked to Al Qubaisi’s involvement in 1MDB.

Tell tale connections with Good Star, Jho Low and Najib Razak

There was just one other major external transaction paid into Al
Qubaisi’s Vasco account during the same financial year – US$20,750,000
was transferred from the other secret Jho Low owned company Good Star
Limited on 20th February 2013.

Transfer from Good Star into the same beneficiary account belonging to Vasco

at BPERE – acc no 390 610

Had there been a shortfall on the agreed Blackstone transfers, which was made up by Jho Low’s other company Good Star?

Otherwise, can the now sacked Mr Al Qubaisi explain these
extraordinary secret payments into his accounts, just in the very period
when Aabar and 1MDB were entering into a series of ‘joint investment’
deals from which billions have gone missing?

Payment to the Prime Minister!

There is an even more serious angle to this explosive set of
discoveries.

Sarawak Report has learnt that the on-going 1MDB
investigation into Najib Razak’s AmPrivate Bank accounts in KL has also
established that enormous payments came in from the very same source a
few months earlier.

In 2011 Blackstone Asia Real Estate Partners Limited paid a total of
US$170 million into the same private account belonging to Najib Razak
which later received US$680 million in 2013, as reported by Sarawak
Report, along with the Wall Street Journal.

Sarawak Report has already reported there had been earlier payments,
which had brought the final sum in the account to well over a billion
dollars. After the election over US$600 million was in fact sent exported back into personal accounts belonging to the Prime Minister in Singapore (now frozen) and the AmBank account closed.

Party mode – Al Qubaisi has poured hundreds of millions into buying up nightclubs in Vegas

We are now able to disclose that the first of those series of
payments, totalling US$170 million came from Blackstone Asia Real Estate
Partners Limited (BVI) and it was supported by the very same identical
letter of guarantee provided by the bogus sheikh ‘Saud Abdulaziz Majid al-Saud’, which also backed the later US$680 million ‘donation’ in 2013.

As we have detailed, Saud Abdulaziz Majid al-Saud has turned out not
to exist and the series of identical letters provide no details of his
address or credentials.

No wonder the task force investigations into 1MDB ended up querying
these enormous payments as part of their remit into Malaysia’s missing
development funds.

The official investigators had clearly concluded (before they were rudely shut down, arrested, sacked and in one case murdered)
that these transfers into Najib’s accounts were directly linked to the
disappearances of vast sums of money from the company’s accounts.

History of an impersonator company

So what of this BVI based company, which suddenly transferred so much
money into the accounts of the bosses behind Aabar and 1MDB?

Blackstone Group does indeed have a subsidiary called Blackstone Real Estate Partners Asia.
However, the major global player has responded to enquiries to
confirm that the almost identically named Blackstone Asia Real Estate
Partners (BVI) has nothing to do with their business.

Research into the shadowy world of BVI corporations has revealed that
this particular shell company was incorporated on November 1st 2010
under the name of Foreign FX Trading Limited and changed its name to
Blackstone Asia Real Estate Partners on 26th May 2011:

Short lived history of a shell company used to transfer hundreds of millions of dollars

Having transferred the hundreds of millions of dollars into both
Najib and Khadem Al Qubaisi’s accounts the company was put into
liquidation on 30th April 2013, just before the Malaysian general
election.

Time to close down this short-lived multi-million dollar operation?

Sarawak Report contends that the explanation for this series of
events is that Blackstone Asia Real Estate Partners Limited (BVI) was
merely another of Jho Low’s secretive vehicles for transferring money,
which he habitually named to sound as if they belonged to more credible working concerns.

Other such companies which we have identified as being linked to Jho
Low’s laundering activities are PetroSaudi International Limited
(Seychelles); SRG (Strategic Resouces Global); Aabar Investments PJS Ltd and Merryl Capital.

Najib must explain why his anonymous donor appears to be Jho Low

The same London based company, Offshore Incorporations Centre, was
employed to incorporate both Good Star Limited in the Seychelles and the
Blackstone bogus company in BVI. Sarawak Report has already confirmed that international investigators have now established that the sole shareholder of Good Star is indeed none other than Jho Low.

Prime Minister Najib must surely now address what has now become
increasingly plain and obvious, which is that much of the money recorded
as having gone missing from the 1MDB/Aabar joint ventures, appears to
now have been traced into bank accounts belonging to the two main
players in these transactions – himself and Khadem Al Qubaisi.

The facilitator in the Blackstone BVI transactions was plainly once
more Jho Low, using yet another of his web of off-shore vehicles to
shift the cash, before he liquidated it (like Good Star) in an attempt
to obliterate the evidence.

Wednesday, January 20, 2016

20 Jan 2016

Reproduced with permission

AG Apandi – passing the buck

Amongst the shocking items of evidence understood to have been passed
by the MACC’s 1MDB corruption enquiry to the Attorney General were
credit card bills run up by the PM for his personal shopping on the
public company SRC International’s named company credit cards!

AG Mohamed Apandi, who replaced sacked Gani Patail in August after
Najib heard charges were about to be brought on the matter, is clearly
playing for time, having yesterday returned the entire dossier to the
MACC (Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission) for ‘further
clarifications’.

Apandi, of course, comes up for retirement in just 3 weeks time on
February 11th, when he will hit 65. Najib’s uber-loyal prosecutor
Shafee Abdullah is already sworn in to replace him, which ought now to
enable Apandi to escape this hot potato (he hopes) and to pass it on to
Malaysia’s most famous legal thug.

Najib must in turn be hoping that Shafee will simply thrust the whole
dossier in the bin and continue to act as his one man legal attack unit
against anyone who threatens the ‘Big Boss’.

One month, two credit cards and over three million ringgit!

Shafee and colleague

However, Shafee will be landed with an uncomfortable cover-up to deal
with, simply because so many people now have the details from the
dossier and are willing to leak them – to outfits such as Sarawak
Report.

Last year we already reported
that Najib and his wife splashed huge sums of money during August 2014
on credit cards for their European holiday. We are now able to furnish
further details of the expenditure, information which we are reliably
informed is included in the MACC dossier, which Apandi has decided to
sidestep.

The two cards involved were a Visa card issued by CIMB (no: 4585 8180
0000 5496) on which RM449,000 was spent and a Master Card issued by
Maybank (no: 5289 4380 0003 8961) on which RM2.8 million was spent in
the course of the month of August in 2014.

Items funded included hotels, meals, jewellery purchases and other
personal luxury expenditures in the South of Europe, including Italy and
Monaco.

Rosmah
– the mystery over who funds her big jewellery is starting to unravel
as more and more public money has shown up in Najib’s spending patterns.

The devastating detail, which makes this expenditure so toxic for a
Prime Minister who has spent the last year trying to explain the source
of his ostentatious wealth, is that both cards were in name of the
company SRC International, which began as a subsidiary of 1MDB before it was taken over by the Finance Ministry directly (Najib is also Finance Minister).

Toxic company

SRC International was famously launched with a RM4 billion loan from
the public pension fund KWAP and has from the very beginning been
embroiled in controversy over its opaque operations and lack of
accountability. The Chief Executive of SRC was none other than Nik Faisal Arif Kamil,
who is currently a fugitive in Indonesia and at the centre of the
scandal relating to the missing monies from 1MDB and tycoon Jho Low’s
sale of UBG.

After public demands for greater accountability over SRC in the 1MDB
accounts, Najib in his dual capacity as Minister of Finance took the
company directly under the Ministry of Finance and opposition parties
have consistently campaigned for proper accountability over whatever has
happened to the mission RM4 billion pension fund ‘investment’.

The crisis of confidence deepened after Sarawak Report and the Wall Street Journal reported in detail how
RM42 million was funnelled in late 2014 early 2015 by Nik Kamil from
SRC into Najib’s personal accounts in KL – an allegation that the Prime
Minister has signally failed to refute.

Nik Faisal Arif Kamil, who fled to Jakarta to evade questioning

This new information that Najib was also using SRC International’s
company credit cards to fund his private jet-setting the previous August
helps to further explain how it is that the establishment in KL is
buzzing with the news that a slew of suggested criminal charges have now
been brought against Najib by the MACC, which was the task force
responsible for examining the SRC angle of the 1MDB corruption probe.

Opposition DAP MP Tony Pua has constantly repeated his complaint that
virtually none of the RM4 billion borrowed from KWAP has been properly
accounted for by SRC. His concerns were not allayed by a Prime
Ministerial statement last year, which referred to an investment in a
Mongolian coal mine as the major venture in which SRC was involved.
After all, Sarawak Report was able to expose that investment as a relatively minor expenditure, worth at the most US85 million.

Jho Low’s games with names have included SRC International

Sarawak Report has also pointed out that the Prime Minister’s proxy,
the businessman Jho Low, has been further identified as the owner of the
similarly named SRC Global,
which was involved in a private business venture to buy out Canada’s
Coastal Energy together with the sacked former Abu Dhabi Aabar fund
manager Khadem Al Qubaisi, who had extensive dealings with 1MDB.

It is just one of a series of dealings involving Low where confusion
of ownership appears to have been deliberately sown the use of names
similar to companies owned by 1MDB or other major concerns.

Investigations show that the same circle of contacts Najib Razak and
his family, Jho Low and Khadem Al Qubaisi have appeared time and again
in a series of business dealings both public and private, but all funded
by Malaysia’s public money raised by the Prime Minister.

AG’s hot potato

Yesterday’s boomeranging of the MACC dossier makes plain that Apandi
is set on sitting out this particular dilemma and passing on the entire
toxic mess to his eager successor, Shafee Abdullah. It offers Shafee
the choice of becoming identified as wholly complicit in a cover up if
he then closes the case or of turning on his key client for the past
decade.

Certainly, this would not be the first time that Shafee will have
been called on as a fixer of scandals involving the present Prime
Minister. In fact, Shafee has been on hand for just about every other
major reputational danger that has enveloped Najib in the past.

It was Shafee who waded in to help
during the Altantuya murder case and organised for top suspect Najib’s
proxy Razak Baginda to be removed as a defendent; Shafee who was found
to have together with Najib interviewed the accuser of Anwar Ibrahim the
day before that young man reported a sodomy allegation and then he
again who prosecuted the case against the opposition leader, despite
complaints over the conflict of interest and Shafee who appeared in the
hospital, apparently representing no one, on the day of the
assassination of the AmBank founder Hussein Najadi, in order to inform
the family that the body would be given a Muslim burial the very next
day – before they could reach KL.

This time, however, Najib’s master fixer may find the evidence less
amendable to disappearance as he steps into his new job at the centre of
an unprecedented political scandal in Malaysia, not least because the
SRC investigation itself pales into insignificance compared to the vast
sums that also reached Najib’s private accounts from a series of BVI
companies – guaranteed by a Sheikh, who turned out not to actually exist.

Tuesday, January 19, 2016

17 Jan 2016

Reproduced with permission

All the perfumes of Arabia, but can Najib get off the hook?

The new Attorney General Mohamed Apandi may by now be wishing he had not taken the job.

His predecessor was unconstitutionally booted out by the Prime
Minister in July for bringing forward charges based on the purloining of
millions from the pension fund KWAP into Najib’s own private accounts.

Now the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) has completed its
investigation into the matter and placed a dossier on Apandi’s desk,
which according to several sources, contains no less than 37 separate
charges against Najib, based on the same evidence.

Moreover, Apandi is aware that this evidence has now been widely
distributed and is known to all the top brass in UMNO, making a
protracted cover-up extremely hard to achieve.

Kevin Morais

In November this AG had issued a bald lie following the brutal kidnap
and shocking murder of Kevin Morais, who had been the public prosecutor
tasked with drawing up the original charges for the MACC. Apandi
stated that Morais had had no role in the investigation.

Murdered Kevin Morais

However, it is now widely established that Kevin was indeed the key
prosecutor on the case and he is believed to have been the source of the
leak of the original charge sheets drawn up against Najib to this news portal.

Before he was abducted (and on the advice of Sarawak Report to the
then anonymous whistleblower) Morais also sent the contents of his
laptop file on the investigation to a number of trusted confidants –
these are now waiting to see if Malaysia’s own forces of law and order
are going to do their job or if they will need to release the
information separately.

It makes for a difficult situation for Apandi and Special Branch are
known to have been trawling the friends and relatives of Kevin Morais in
an unsuccessful bid to secure the return of these sets of documents.

Since these authorities seized the relevant laptop from Kevin’s flat
shortly after he was abducted, they are also fully aware of just how
much information was passed out by the whistleblower before he was
silenced. He himself had explained his motives in a series of emails to
Sarawak Report at the time. His sentiments included these words on
behalf of those in the civil service trying to bring out the truth:

““The police continue to be rather aggressive in trying
to uncover the sources of the leaks. And not actually trying to nab the
lunatic on top of the pyramid, running this country to the ground just
so his arse is saved… and I’m not sure if we’ll be able to stop this
lunacy.”

The information now thus at large from the investigation is said to
include copies of the bank statements showing how RM42 million, which
was passed into one of Najib Razak’s personal accounts from 1MDB, under
the auspices of “Corporate and Social Reponsibility” payments, was
actually spent by the Prime Minister.

It was back in July that Sarawak Report together with the Wall Street Journal published details
from the 1MDB investigation that showed the exact trail of the money:
an original RM4 billion had been borrowed from the KWAP public pension
fund by a subsidiary of 1MDB named SRC International Sdn Bhd; then
between December 2014 and February 2015 a total of RM42 million was
siphoned out of SRC through two intermediary companies controlled by
1MDB executive Nik Faisal Ariff Kamil (Gandingan Mentari Sdn Bhd) and
Datuk Shamsul Anwar Sulaiman (Ihsan Perdana Sdn Bhd). The latter has
already been arrested and interviewed by investigators, whilst Nik Kamil
has fled to Jakarta.

Transfer 1

Transfer 2

Najib has said that none of this public money was spent on personal
things. However, those who have seen the relevant bank statements have
told Sarawak Report that there were several expensive shopping items
recorded, many bought on foreign trips.

The whistleblower himself had detailed to Sarawak Report during email correspondence in August:

“Actually, the spending .. was rather
mundane. Credit card bills, shopping, suppliers to the last elections
that had not gotten paid because BNM had frozen the accounts of other
proxy companies, that sort of stuff.”

It is the shocking source of this money that is most damaging in this
case – public pension fund money, which was spent by the Prime Minister
on his family’s notorious ostentatiousness and extravagance abroad.
Can it get worse than that?

Unfortunately, the answer is that yes it can and it is the further
evidence against Najib which is making the situation even more
impossible for the Prime Minister and his allies to contain, not least
because whilst the SRC scandal is localised, the other graft allegations
involve massive dollar currency transactions and implicate foreign
banks, which the FBI and other international regulators are now publicly
investigating.

Mr
and Mrs Najib Razak turned to religion over December. Rosmah is also a
notorious practitioner of black magic as a way of advancing her ends.
Nevertheless the couple spent New Year negotiating.

“It is not RM2.6 billion it is RM4 billion”!

Indeed, for the Najib loyalist Apandi the problems merely begin with
that MACC dossier, which has been sizzling on his desk since before
Christmas, awaiting action.

On top of those 37 charges relating to SRC International there
remains the issue of the far larger sum of money paid from a number of
mysterious off-shore entities into a separate AmBank account belonging
to the Prime Minister.

Sarawak Report and the Wall Street Journal have also published the
details of two of those payments, made from a BVI entity named Tanore
Finance Corporation just before the general election.

The monster RM2.6 billion payment

Sarawak Report has further detailed how the money came into Najib’s AmBank account, via the Abu Dhabi Aabar fund’s Falcon Bank,
just days after Goldman Sachs had negotiated a massive US$3 billion
bond issue in order to fund a supposed strategic partnership between
1MDB and Aabar.

Records show that much of the money from the series of bond deals
between these two funds has gone missing and the Chairman of Aabar was sacked shortly after the 1MDB scandal broke last year.

What is now widely known in UMNO’s upper circles, thanks to further
investigations by Malaysian task forces, is that this RM2.6 billion
transaction in March 2013 was just a portion of the money which went
into Najib’s same AmBank account during the period after 2011.

Najib’s
story about an anonymous Sheikh has not washed with UMNO – especially
since the money has never come to the party itself!

As Sarawak Report has already pointed out, there were at least two further sets of payments again worth billions of ringgit.

Most of this money, which Najib now claims was supposed to help UMNO
win in elections, was never spent. The majority was sent back to into
Najib Razak’s private account in Singapore straight after the election
was over and the KL account was closed.

These facts, now widely known within UMNO’s top circles, make a
mockery of the lame and unsubstantiated excuse eventually provided by
Najib that this was money donated by an anonymous Middle Eastern royal, who was supposedly in the habit of handing vast sums to friendly foreign politicians to assist in their elections.

Not only would such a secret private political donation by a foreign
potentate have been illegal, but the money plainly ended up in Najib’s
private foreign bank accounts, where much of it remains frozen in
Singapore.

The UMNO warlords have now acquired all the details, Sarawak Report
has been reliably informed – and they are naturally furious on all
counts. This is a genie that cannot be returned into the bottle. One
UMNO insider has told Sarawak Report that all the party bigwigs now
know:

“He didn’t just take the famous RM2.6 billion, it was RM4 billion and more”!

The game is up, but has Najib grasped the new realities?

It is because of this intractable mess that, behind a facade of UMNO
unity and relentless PR about the ‘crisis being over’, stealthy talks
were carried out at the highest levels in a series of locations over the
New Year holiday break.

“Appearances are being maintained”, one insider told SR,
“there have been the usual lavish events and appearances and of course
Rosmah is still determined not to let go, but there have been
negotiations in Tokyo and Dubai. Najib knows the game is up, but he
does not appreciate the reality of his situation. He is a dead duck and
yet he is trying to negotiate a safe exit along with a guarantee of all
the stolen money! The others will not agree.”

There are other factors prolonging Najib’s stay in office. UMNO’s
top brass may have agreed that he must go, but they are fighting over
who succeeds. Zahid has made clear that he aims to take over from his
Deputy Prime Minister’s position. However, others have pointed out that
this forceful politician was promoted by Najib himself in response to
the corruption crisis, replacing the Deputy Leader of UMNO, Muhyiddin
Yassin, now banished from the inner circle of government and therefore
far less contaminated by events.

The UMNO constitution also demands that it is the party that should
choose its leaders, which puts Muhyiddin Yassin in line for the
succession, not Zahid. Thus the arguments are not about whether Najib
should go, but over who should succeed him and on what terms Najib
should leave.

Nowhere to go!

The other major sticking point delaying Najib’s departure is the
thorny issue of his criminal actions. The Prime Minister knows the game
is up, say insiders. With the economy in free fall and the country
enmeshed in top-down corruption, he sees little glory either to be
gained from hanging out for a further election win.

“He wants out, but he can’t get out” speaks another source. “He
has run the economy into the ground and has charges levelled against
him, but he still thinks he should get a royal goodbye”.

Plenty of others would like to see Najib and Rosmah both jailed.
After all, the money in Rosmah’s own frozen accounts in KL is also in
the order of hundreds of unexplained millions, with plenty of stories in
the wings relating to crony contracts and the exploitation of public
funds.

Yet the ‘First Couple’ are not only hanging out for full immunity and
safe passage abroad in the course of the on-going negotiations with
their colleagues, they also want to keep the dosh!

RPK penning accusations against Rosmah’s targets.

UMNO warlords who have failed to see eye to eye with Rosmah on this
matter are said to have found themselves treated to scurrilous
accusations from her client blogger, the UK-based ‘RPK’, a form of
retaliation which has not been appreciated.

The present deadlock has been further strengthened by the fact that
Najib appears to have encountered a worrying shortage of willing foreign
bolt holes.

Turkey has rejected his asylum request and various Middle
Eastern countries have simply failed to reply to his entreaties.

The much vaunted Kazakhstan is apparently not actually Rosmah’s kind
of place. Besides, the couple’s new in-laws, while not lacking in
pretension, are regarded as persona non grata with the powers that be.

What all this means is that beneath the apparent calm awaiting
Najib’s presentation of his gloomy, revised 2016 budget (a stark
recognition of the dire state the economy has reached under his watch)
there is an explosive situation waiting to erupt. When it does, the
changes are likely to come quickly.

Yet, whilst all this festers, insiders have told SR, Najib is falling
prey to every political and financial demand. The wounded PM can’t say
no to anybody as he attempts to shore up his support:

“Everyone is going for bribes and contracts and then when that is not enough they come back for more bribes” detailed one disgusted onlooker. “They are feeding on the carcass of Malaysia’s blighted economy, while Najib tries to stay in office that little bit longer”

It is a given of politics that once a Prime Minister starts to open
even the discreetest of negotiations about his exit there can really be
no going back. But, how this fraught situation will be ultimately
resolved and what will happen to Najib when the dam bursts is still a
guessing game for the insiders, who have been speaking to Sarawak Report.

Sunday, December 20, 2015

19 Dec 2015

Reproduced with permission

Europe has woken up to the corruption and human rights abuses in
Malaysia, thanks to the dedication and advocacy of brave campaigners…
and also to the astonishing, headline catching abuses of Najib Razak
himself over the past weeks.

Europe’s democracies reminded of their strong ties with Malaysia and deplored the recent descent into dictatorship

This is a time when Europe is concerned about extremism and violence targeted mainly at their own countries.

Even so, the representatives here were not prepared to be gulled into
accepting Najib’s clampdowns on his own people and his own party under
the excuse of so-called anti-terrorism measures. They can see that by
stamping on people’s liberties and rights Najib is creating the
conditions for terror and instability, not the other way around.

The resolution shows Najib has fooled nobody in the world but himself
and the self-interested flunkeys whom he has paid to support him. The
full resolution of the European Parliament is below and you can watch the debate on the resolution here:

The European Parliament,

– having regard to its previous resolutions on Malaysia,

– having regard to its resolution of 15 January 2014 on the future of EU-ASEAN relations(1) ,

– having regard to the Statement by the EEAS Spokesperson of 15
April 2015 on the recently adopted amendment to the Sedition Act in
Malaysia,

– having regard to the Statement by the EEAS Spokesperson of 17
March 2015 on the arrest of Nurul Izzah, opposition Member of Parliament
in Malaysia,

– having regard to the Statement by the EEAS Spokesperson of 10
February 2015 on the conviction of Malaysian opposition politician Anwar
Ibrahim,

– having regard to the EU Strategic Framework on Human Rights,

– having regard to the Statement by the UN High Commissioner for
Human Rights of 9 April 2015 on draft anti-terror and sedition laws,

– having regard to the joint press release by the EEAS on the EU-ASEAN policy dialogue on human rights of 23 October 2015,

– having regard to the EU Guidelines on Human Rights Defenders,

– having regard to UN Universal Periodic Review session of October 2013,

– having regard to the report of the Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons of June 2015,

– having regard to the second Universal Periodic Review of Malaysia
before the UN Human Rights Council, and its recommendations, of October
2013,

– having regard to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948,

– having regard to the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights Defenders of 1998,

– having regard to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) of 1966,

– having regard to the UN Convention against Torture and Other
Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT) of 1984,

– having regard to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Human Rights Declaration,

– having regard to Rules 135(5) and 123(4) of its Rules of Procedure,

A. whereas the EU regards Malaysia as a key political and economic
partner in South-East Asia; whereas the EU and Malaysia are negotiating a
Partnership and Cooperation Agreement and a Free Trade Agreement;

B. whereas the space for public debate and free speech in Malaysia
is rapidly narrowing as the government resorts to vaguely worded
criminal laws to silence its critics and quell public discontent and
peaceful expression, including debates on matters of public interest;
whereas these laws include the Sedition Act, the Printing Presses and
Publications Act, the Communications and Multimedia Act and the Peaceful
Assembly act, amongst others;

C. whereas on 3 December 2015 the National Security Council Bill was
passed in the Malaysian Parliament by a majority vote; whereas the bill
grants the National Security Council led by the Prime Minister sweeping
powers to declare a state of emergency in any area deemed a security
risk, giving broad powers of arrest, search and seizure without warrant;

D. whereas under the Sedition Act alone at least 78 people have been investigated or charged since the beginning of 2014;

E. whereas former opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim was sentenced on
charges of sodomy in February 2015 following a politically motivated
prosecution which resulted in criminal proceedings that failed to meet
international standards of fair trial; whereas he has been denied
appropriate medical care;

F. whereas LGBTI people in Malaysia are criminalised under the
country’s anti-sodomy law and regional laws prohibiting cross-dressing,
and face political hate speech, arbitrary arrest, physical and sexual
assault, imprisonment, and other abuses;

G. whereas Malaysian cartoonist Zulkiflee Anwar Ulhaque (Zunar) is
facing charges under the Sedition Act following critical tweets against
the government with regard to the sentencing of Anwar Ibrahim; whereas
blogger Khalid Ismath and academic Azmi Sharom face similar charges;

H. whereas the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission has questioned
the Prime Minister in connection with graft allegations after the
discovery of over 600 million euros in his bank account without any
justification of source and purpose, as well as on separate allegations
that hundreds of millions of euros were missing from deals involving a
state firm he launched, 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB);

I. whereas media outlets and publishing houses have faced
restrictions under the Printing Presses and Publications Act following
reporting about these allegations, and whereas lawyer Matthias Chang and
politician Khairuddin Abu Hassan were arrested following their
investigations into these allegations;

J. whereas the High Representative raised concerns regarding the
abusive use of criminal laws during her visit to Malaysia on 5-6 August
2015;

K. whereas, according to the UN and NGOs, the Malaysian police
forces have increasingly resorted to acts of torture, late night
arrests, unjustifiable remands and selective prosecution;

L. whereas Malaysia continues to practice the death penalty with up to 1 000 prisoners currently on death row;

M. whereas Malaysia is a Member of the UN Security Council and the
current ASEAN Chair, and the 27th ASEAN Summit was held in Kuala Lumpur
from 18 to 22 November 2015;

1. Reaffirms the EU’s strong commitment to the Malaysian people with
whom the EU has strong and longstanding political, economic and
cultural ties;

2. Deplores the deteriorating human rights situation in Malaysia and
in particular the crackdown on civil society activists, academics,
media and political activists; expresses concern with regard to the
spike in the number of people facing charges or arrest under the
Sedition Act;

3. Is particularly concerned about the adoption of the National
Security Council Bill and urges its withdrawal; calls on the government
to maintain a proper balance between the need to safeguard national
security and the imperative to protect civil and political rights;

4. Urges the Malaysian Government to immediately release all
political prisoners, including former opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim,
and to provide them with appropriate medical care, and to drop
politically motivated charges, including those against cartoonist
Zulkiflee Anwar Haque (Zunar), blogger Khalid Ismath, academic Azmi
Sharom, political dissidents Khairuddin Abu Hassan and Matthias Chang,
and human rights activists Lena Hendry and Maria Chin Abdullah;

5. Urges the Malaysian authorities to repeal the Sedition Act and to
bring all legislation, including the Prevention of Terrorism Act, the
Printing Presses and Publications Act, the Communications and Multimedia
Act, the Peaceful Assembly Act, and other relevant provisions of the
penal code, in line with international standards on freedom of
expression and assembly and the protection of human rights; calls on the
Malaysian authorities to facilitate peaceful assemblies, and to
guarantee the safety of all participants and their freedom of expression
across the whole country;

6. Urges the establishment of the Independent Police Complaints and
Misconduct Commission (IPCMC), as recommended by the Police Commission
of Inquiry in 2005, to investigate allegations of torture and deaths in
police custody;

7. Underlines the importance of independent and transparent
investigations into the graft allegations, and of full cooperation with
the investigators; urges the Malaysian Government to refrain from
putting pressure on the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission and media;

8. Deeply deplores the rise of supremacist groups which contribute further to the creation of ethnic tensions;

9. Encourages the Malaysian Government to open a dialogue with opposition parties and civil society stakeholders;

10. Calls on the Malaysian Government to ratify key international
human rights conventions, including the ICCPR, the ICESCR, the CAT, the
ICERD, ILO Convention 169, the ICC Rome Statute, as well as the 1951
Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its optional protocol;

11. Asks the Malaysian Government to extend a standing invitation to
all the UN Special Procedures, thereby enabling special rapporteurs to
visit Malaysia without asking for an invitation;

12. Reiterates its position that the death penalty is a cruel,
inhumane and degrading treatment, and calls on Malaysia to introduce a
moratorium as the first step towards the abolition of the death penalty
for all offences and to commute all death sentences to prison terms;

13. Calls on the EU and its Member States to coordinate policies
towards Malaysia, in line with the EU Strategic Framework on Human
Rights, in order to encourage reform on the above issues of concern
through all possible means, including in the context of the UN where
Malaysia is a non-permanent member of the Security Council in 2015-2016;

14. Urges the EU Delegation to Malaysia to step up efforts to
finance projects on freedom of expression and reforming repressive laws,
and to use all appropriate tools, including the European Instrument for
Democracy and Human Rights, to protect human rights defenders; urges
the withdrawal of the anti-sodomy law and calls on the EEAS, in line
with the EU guidelines on the protection and promotion of the rights of
LGBTI persons, to step up its work on the rights of LGBTI people in
Malaysia who face violence and persecution, and to aim in particular
towards the decriminalisation of homosexuality and transgenderism;

15. Reaffirms the importance of the EU-ASEAN policy dialogue on
human rights as a useful tool to exchange good practices and promote
capacity-building initiatives;

16. Calls on the Commission to make sure that human rights concerns
are duly taken into account during future negotiations on an EU-Malaysia
FTA and PCA;

17. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the
Council, the Commission, the Vice-President of the Commission/High
Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, the parliaments
and governments of the Member States, the parliament and government of
Malaysia, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the
governments of the ASEAN Member States.

I Know I'm A Gone Case

Taib's Tasteless Monstrosity Across The River ("TMATR")

The New Sarawak State Assembly Building - Symbol Of High & Mighty Corruption By Lowlife Representatives Of An Oppressed People

BN Buys Votes With The People's Own Money

Dear Sarawak Voters, You will receive money from Barisan National for your votes. Keep it and vote for Pakatan Rakyat!

Your Vote Counts!

Register As a Voter Today If You Want To See A Change In Government

Register To Vote Now!

Your Future And That Of Your Children Is At Stake! Sarawakians For Sarawak!

Enough Bullshit!

TV Antara

Not Development But Theft!

Testimony of Penan Communities in Sarawak against Taib Mahmud's evil plan to dominate the state and exploit its resources for his own, his family's and their cronies' benefit: the "Politics of Development", which is actually the "Politics of Theft"

Speak Out!

Sign The Petition - Click Above

The Untouchables

Rimbunan Hijau's World Of Forest Crimes And Political Patronage

David W Brown - http://www.geocities.com/ davidbrown_id/

Author of "Why Governments Fail to Capture Economic Rent: The Unofficial Appropriation of Rain Forest Rent by Rulers in Insular Southeast Asia Between 1970 and 1999"

Does Anybody Care?

Does Taib Mahmud & His Timber Towkay Cronies Care For The Penan?

Taib & His Timber Towkay Friends & Family Only Care For Money & Power

Sarawakians Want Economic & Business Reform!

No More Crony Capitalism! End Monopoly & Unethical Business Practices. Greater & Fairer Distribution of Business Opportunities. More Equitable Distribution of Wealth & State Resources. Bring Our Timber Wealth Back from Overseas. Undertake & Enforce Truly Sustainable Logging Practices. Create More Employment Opportunities in the State at Better Wages. Elimination of Poverty Irrespective of Race. No More Polluting or Dirty Industries. Businesses Must Be Environmentally Conscious.

Sarawakians Want Political Reform!

Justice & Equity, Freedom From Tyranny & Corruption! No More Divide & Rule! Better And Transparent Government. Limit the CM's Post to 2 Terms. Let Voters, Not Parties, Decide Whom They Want As CM. Check All Abuses of Govt Machinery. No More Vote Buying. End Political Party Control of the Mass Media. End Political Intimidation of the People.

Sarawakians Want Land Reform!

Development With Responsibility and Conservation for Future Generations. Amend the Land Law and Policy on NCR Land. Survey All NCR Lands and Issue Communal Titles. Let the NCR Landowners have More Say in the Development of NCR Lands. Curb Abuses by LCDA and other Government Bodies Acting in the Interests of Plantation Developers and not the NCR Landowners. Revise NCR Land Development Schemes for Greater Benefit to the NCR Landowners in Practice. No More Theft of Land for Private Interests Under the Guise of Public Purposes.

Sarawakians Want 80% Of Sarawak's Own Petroleum Revenues! And A 40% Share Of Petronas too!

When Taib Mahmud Is Gone!

Sarawakians Want an East-West Highway like this!

Make it a Freeway!

Shin Yang Bulldozer Overlooking Destruction of Yet Another NCR Land Area

They Bulldozed This Padi Farm Which The Natives Had Worked On For Generations

The Natives of Sarawak Don't Own The Land On Which They have Toiled With Their Blood, Sweat and Tears, But Taib's Rich Chinese Towkay Friends Can Come and Take It Anytime They Want

Taib's Crony Towkays Pay The Police To Evict NCR Landowners

No Land For the Poor in Taib's Sarawak, Only for His Rich Friends & Family

Paramilitary Police Attacking Iban NCR Landowners

On Behalf of Taib's Crony Towkays

Taib Mahmud Bears Full Responsibility for this Murder

So that His Towkay Friends Could Get Their Bloody Hands On Native (NCR) Lands.

Police Attack The Penans With Tear Gas On Behalf Of Their Timber Tycoon Masters

Dismantlement of a Penan logging road blockade near Long Ajeng (Ulu Baram) by riot police using tear gas on 29 September 1993. Due to the excessive use of force during the dismantlement, the Penan reported that 203 persons were injured. Three people died as a result of the police attack.

Monster of Housing

2nd Monster of Resource Mismanagement

Unspeakable Spikar of Taib's State Assembly

Iban Traitor

About Me

I am a member of the human race of Tanjung Melanau ancestry, descendant of Saweng and Adam. No, I do not advocate violence, merely reform. The gory title is only symbolic, as are the images below, but the mission is real, to bring about the downfall of BN and a change in the government of Sarawak for the betterment of all Sarawakians.
Email: altugauw@gmail.com

Join The Lowlife Club

BN Will Pay You Millions But You Will Still Be Lowlife

Frogs

Need To Eat Too - Kenyang-Kenyang

Taib Mahmud's Email

To those who wish to say some last words to Taib Mahmud, please send your emails to: mahalanun@gmail.com. If you are lucky and he is in a good mood he may reply. Emails and replies may be considered for publication on Sarawak Headhunter's blog. Taib Mahmud's blog, Mahalanun, is in the process of being set up, but it may not be completed before he dies or is removed from office.

Senyum Kambing - Melayu Bodoh

Boikot Utusan Malaysia & TV3

Bagan Pinang, Say No To Both ISA

Biodata

Zulkefly Mohd Omar - Hero Of Broga

Outright Bribery & Corruption By BN In Bagan Pinang

Sambutan Hari Raya Aidil Korupsi

UMNO Desperadoes Campaign In Army Camp

Don't they realize that all this can and will be used in court for an election petition if PAS loses?

No To Isa In Bagan Pinang

Bye bye, Pak Blah!

Just a Pity You were Sleeping on the Job and Didn't Get Around to doing What You had Promised to do.

Najib - Prime Monster

Can We Believe Anything This Guy Has To Say Either? He Is Going To Be Worse Than Pak Blah. STOP THIS MAN BEFORE THIS WHOLE COUNTRY IS RUINED!

What Kind Of Attorney-General Is This?

Rogue From Sabah - He doesn't even know that the JAC Bill requires amendments to the Federal Constitution & Consent of Sarawak & Sabah. In his hurry to support a corrupt regime, he has all the finesse of a bull in a china shop.

Malaysiakini

Latest Aliran Monthly

Phantom Postal Voters

Total Blog Directory

"The land belongs to the countless numbers of people who are dead, the few who are living and the multitude of those yet to be born".

Tum Ketumba' - Jerry Kamit

Rampa Menua - Jerry Kamit

Mahatma Gandhi on the Roots of Violence

The Roots of Violence:wealth without work,pleasure without conscience,knowledge without character,commerce without morality,science without humanity,worship without sacrifice,politics without principles.

Only after the last tree has been cut down;Only after the last fish has been caught;Only after the last river has been poisoned;Only then will you realize that money cannot be eaten.- Cree Indian Prophecy